


Sleeping Dragons

by kisahawklin



Category: Priest (2011)
Genre: Author's Favorite, Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:10:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Priest and Black Hat as young men, pre-ordination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Dragons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/gifts).



> I am sorry to say I couldn't write backstory for Priest and Black Hat without giving them names - I used the ones from [this story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/199323) (Luke for Priest and Adam for Black Hat) because they feel right to me. Thanks to ivorygates for an amazing beta, any mistakes left definitely my own.

It'd started as a jest. A cruel one, perhaps, though Luke hadn't realized until too late. Adam isn't like him. None of them are like him. None of them have tasted a normal life, sex and love and scratching out a living in a dead world. He used to think it was a basic experience, going through those torturous nights in your pubescence, betrayed by your body and sometimes your mind, dreaming of things you don't understand and not knowing why.

These kids have never had the dreams. Their dragons are still sleeping. He couldn't have known the danger of waking that monster in Adam.

*

Luke's first months in training are a blur of indistinct memories colored by sorrow. He trains with children – boys and girls under the age of ten. There are a few candidates in their teens, but the majority of his time is spent in the company of children who are closer to his daughter's age than his.

He learns meditation and prayers, rudimentary elements of attack and defense. He spends his time in meditation unlocking the memory of his wife and daughter, holding them close for those few precious moments. 

It isn't until he learns to keep them locked away that he is released to train with the older candidates.

*

"I will be your preceptor," Adam says, taking him to the bunkhouse and helping him put away his few meager belongings. "I will guide you through the routine these first days, train with you on combat skills, and help you learn your prayers. Our fates are intertwined now."

Luke doesn't know what that means and he can't know what it will come to mean. He'd thought Adam had been assigned to him as punishment – clearly none of the other candidates have been burdened with anyone so lacking in training.

It isn't until later that he finds out Adam is the highest-ranked candidate, and his reward was to choose his apprentice instead of being assigned one like all the others.

*

"Never?" Luke asks, bumping his shoulder into Adam's after their second day of training together. "Not even–"

"No! That's blasphemy!" Adam's face is a mixture of horror and curiosity. "You know it's not allowed."

Adam is a lean boy of eighteen, wiry still. Luke is only two years older, but it is those two years that make all the difference; he'd married Shannon when they were eighteen and Lucy was born six months later. He'd only just gotten used to Lucy's new sleeping schedule when the Monsignors had found him and told him of his talent. His gift and his duty and, they said, the best way to protect Shannon and Lucy. 

He'd left them, trusting their care to his brother, and tucked them away inside, locked deep in his heart with everything that made him human.

*

"It's the skin, you know," Luke says one night, after they whisper their prayers and climb into their beds and Adam sings him the lullaby he remembers his mother whispering in his ear when he was just a baby.

It isn't even really a joke yet; part of Luke is smirking as he continues, but it isn't the only thing caught up in it. He's grateful for Adam's openness and he wants to share too. There isn't anything that means more to him than Shannon (except Lucy, and he can't bring himself to share her with a boy that will never know fatherhood). He can't begin to describe what Shannon meant to him, except in this one, general way, the way he thought all boys and girls understood. 

"What?" Adam asks, turning his head to stare at Luke. They lock eyes, and Luke can feel the mischief in his belly, dying to tease Adam like he used to tease Owen.

"It's their skin. Women. Their skin smells so good. And it feels…" Luke casts around for a word that captures it. Adam's eyes are wide and he stares at Luke like Satan is going to come up and drag him down to Hell right then and there. "It feels heavenly."

"Blasphemy," Adam whispers, but his eyes are still wide and his breathing uneven.

*

The next day in training, Luke runs a hand down Adam's back. An innocuous gesture before, maybe. _Congratulations_ or _good work_. It is supposed to be more jest, just a simple tease. But Adam snaps his head around at the touch and his eyes trace the line of Luke's arm down to his hand, clammy with the sweat from Adam's back on it.

That night, Adam curls on his side and asks Luke what it was like to have a wife.

Luke smiles as his eyes droop closed. "Warm."

Later that night, Luke wakes to the feel of fingertips drawn lightly over his shoulder. He knows Adam is aware he's not sleeping, but he doesn't acknowledge the touch. When the fingers stop and rest on the dip in his spine, he takes a deep breath and mouths a prayer as he lets it out, asleep before he finishes his supplication.

*

Luke had been chosen for one reason: his will. He always does what needs doing, despite the cost.

He also knows the heavy burden of responsibility. Adam's awakening is his fault, intentional or not. None of the other candidates look at each other, none of the boys or girls lie awake in their bunks, waiting for their brethren to go to sleep so they can touch a shaking hand to their own skin. It is Luke's fault, and it is his responsibility.

*

"It won't be the same as with a woman," he whispers, crowding in close behind Adam under the spray in the showers, letting their skin slide against each other where their bodies touch, glancing contact. Adam moans and his eyes flutter closed.

They are inseparable soon after, training and meals and prayers and sleep. They take their vows together, the happiest day of Adam's life and the day Luke's doom is sealed. They fight and fuck and live their lives with the urgency of those who cannot trust they will get even one more day beyond the one they are in. The years pass and still Luke knows his duty to Adam, though it is one he performs out of love as much as responsibility.

Priest is their name now, to each other as well as the world, except in those rare stolen moments, Adam's skin bare under Luke's hands and tongue.

*

When he loses Adam in the hive, he loses the last unscarred part of himself. He is Priest now. There is nothing else left.

*


End file.
